Tuesday, June 30, 2015

CHARACTER development is the goal of life. If we see this is
the case then virtue learning becomes a goal in and of itself. Learning not of
new knowledge. It’s about learning virtues that will carry us better through
life, preparing us for what is beyond this life. This life is the learning
ground for the next.

Joy is one of those virtues we need. To live a life of joy we
must grapple with contentedness. Real joy is found in being content — no matter
the circumstances. Joy is a pervasive quality. It becomes us. We hope we may exude joy.

In regards to sadness, loneliness plays the same part. When
we are sad, we are really lonely. There is a gap in our being that just hungers
for some joy. When we are lonely we are hopefully at truth with the sadness in
our soul. Nobody likes being sad, but if we are able to be at truth with it
then we are able to grow. Such growth is toward contentedness and a sustaining
joy — again, notwithstanding the circumstances.

Joy grows in our contentedness when we can happily coexist
with our sadness. And contentedness reflects the notion of acceptance — to accept
the things we cannot change.

Maturity is approached when we accept the things we cannot
change. There are just so many things we cannot change that we struggle to
accept. One way to accept the things we cannot change is to dwell upon the
truth of our sadness rather than complain.

It is far easier to complain, but the pride in complaint
holds us back from approaching the truth in our sadness. Pride shields us from
growth because pride cannot handle the truth. Pride results in a compromised
joy where we cannot attain to contentedness.

***

Sadness and loneliness are keys to the truth of joy and
contentedness because they abide in truth, and joy and contentedness cannot
stand up unless they are experienced in truth.

We cannot fake joy and we cannot pretend we are content. We
have joy or we don’t. We are content or we aren’t.

Sadness and loneliness are
when they are. But we would prefer to pretend they weren’t there. But unless we
can be truthful about sad and lonely times we cannot be truthful enough to
enjoy the times we are joyful and content.

Better than pretending to be joyous and content is to
experience the real thing. Ironically, it’s the courage to experience real
sadness and loneliness that opens the way to joy and contentedness.

Joy and contentedness are experienced within the courage to
enter the truth of sadness and loneliness.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

INSIDE OUT
(2015) is a brilliant Disney production that any family therapist could build a
whole philosophy around. It’s a movie about Riley, an eleven year old girl, and
her mother and father. They move from Minnesota to San Francisco and that’s
where Riley’s troubles start. The movie is based on what Riley actually
experiences within the emotions of her inner world — with each of her emotions
(Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust) having a character. Without spoiling
the movie for those who wish to watch it, there is a key reversal where Joy
empowers Sadness.

Sadness is the hero, because, when the chips are down, and
Riley is losing all her core memories (her identity is falling apart), it is
only Sadness that can get through. Sadness gets through with empathy, because
Sadness calls the doldrums of life what they actually are. For a great deal of
time in the movie, Riley is forced to run emotionally without either Joy or Sadness,
so she only has responses of Fear, Anger and Disgust to draw from.

We could say that Joy and Sadness are interdependent. True
joy cannot be experienced without the ability to experience genuine sadness,
for both require honesty. If we are not honest enough to be sad when we are sad
we will react in fear, anger or disgust. If we are not honest enough to be sad
when we are sad then we don’t have the capacity to experience joy. This is
because joy is only truly meaningful and true with honesty. Is there anything
worse than a fabricated joy?

When Sadness heals everything it touches toward the end of
the movie, it’s clear that Sadness is exactly what Riley needs — to be true to
her actual feelings. Only then, when she reaches out to her parents in
courageous truth, to communicate what she’s really feeling, does she receive,
in truth, a response every good parent is blessed to give. They meet her in
that emotional space.

***

Sadness has a depth about it that courageously employs
honesty for healing.

When we can be
sad, without anger or fear or disgust intruding, we are closest to God’s healing
touch, because we honour what is our truth.

Sadness is
central to growth, because it is central to honesty. When our honesty reveals
sadness our vulnerability opens us up to healing.

From this it can
be seen that emotional and spiritual growth don’t initiate with joy, but from an
acknowledgement of genuine sadness.

When we can be
honestly sad, then we can honestly feel joy.

If we wish to be
healed we will embrace our sadness and always have a home for it.

Friday, June 26, 2015

When God sees a person doing life tough, but doing the best
they can; how does God feel? When God knows we are missing out on what our
hearts tell us could be appropriate, and we wait on his timely provision, our
Lord is worshipped.

When we suffer well we worship Jesus in an incarnational way.
This means we behave as Jesus behaved. We don’t complain. We get over
complaint. And when we do that something happens. God transforms us through
humiliation to humility and from offence to obedience. From anger we come to
joy. From pride we come to peace. And even the devil cannot take joy and peace
from us. And then we learn life’s most important lesson — it is through
suffering that we come to be conquerors.

Only through suffering will we be humbled enough to know that
we cannot control our lives. But we can control how we will respond to life’s tests. When we respond
well to the situations of life that are hard, we worship God about the best we
can ever do. Better still is it to initiate works of love — in faith — despite the
fear, discouragement and doubt we might be feeling. To grin and bear. Not in
fakeness. In authenticity, ready to share the amazingly compelling hope we have
inside us.

***

Conquerors are sufferers are givers are lovers are inspirers.

Why would we not willingly suffer — and suffer our
circumstances well — when we are — at the very same time — conquerors and
givers and lovers and inspirers? What can conquer us if our suffering can’t?
What can we not give if we can give ourselves in suffering? Where will we fail
love’s test if we love God enough to live our own life, just as it is, better
than ever before? — in surrender to his will. Who will we not inspire? Not
least ourselves will we inspire.

We are not called to suffer anybody else’s life. We are
called only to suffer our own.

We can do that. God doesn’t ask us to do anything he asks
others to do. He only asks us to do what he asks us to do.

Conquerors are sufferers are givers are lovers are inspirers.

If we will live a successful life it will be because we
mastered this basic principle: the acceptance of our living situation, now. It’s
all we are required practically to do. It’s all we can do. Need we do anything
else? We are to be happy with the very life we are given.

Is that so unpalatable? No. It is the best life for this
lifetime, because God gave it to us. We all have our portions of suffering.

Conquerors are sufferers are givers are lovers are inspirers.
And, are worshippers of God.

And if we will suffer our own lives well, the true Christ
will lead us to himself. And life will never be the same again.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

LOSS makes the
whole of our lives meaningful, but only after we have successfully traversed
all the way out of our grief. Such a thing as loss and grief are hardly more paradoxical.
Here is a list of statements for pondering, hope and encouragement:

Loss takes us away from this world where
finally God can get a look in. It took so much for God to finally entreat our
attention. Now he has it, we are his, holus bolus.

Loss increases our growth by decreasing our joy. Growth comes
when times are toughest. It is the solemn consolation — a divine compensation —
for what we have been forced to go through.

Loss grants us life beyond love, which is life’s
true appreciation of love. We cheapened love so much before we experienced
the essential grief of loss. Now our truer appreciation for love has been
morphed into a deepened sense for the power resplendent in love. Loss makes us
better lovers.

Loss helps us grow up. If we never lose love,
we never actually live. If we only gain in life we only ever think of
ourselves. When I first suffered, as a thirty-six-year-old, was the first time
I genuinely thought of all the suffering in the world. The eyes of my heart
were opened to see it.

Loss is so profound that the grief lasts and
lasts and lasts. However would we learn otherwise other than to greet the
same horrors day after day after day? We humans are characteristically slow
learners. We need deep lessons, hard lessons; the same deep, hard lessons day
after day to learn.

Loss teaches the rudiments of life; that love
means so much it costs grief. How could God counteract the truth of such a
wonder of love if not to balance it with something equally profound: loss?

***

Loss is a horror of living proportions; a death that has come
to life in a dirge of technicolour. It has come as a way of communicating just
how much the loss of love means. It rents us broken and vanquished of soul and
spirit. It takes us deeper than we have ever been before, into the realms of
darkness where only the light of the Lord may shine through into a hope for
tomorrow — whenever tomorrow will finally come.

Loss helps us to grow up. It helps us to value reality. It
helps us not fear reality. It makes us question what is important and relevant
in life. Loss brings us through death into new life.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

RABID discontentment was the single best advantage I ever
experienced out of seasons of anxiety when I have suffered. Admittedly, I have
not been worn down by clinical disorders, but I have experienced several
seasons of anxiety. And what I found worked for me was to not rest in that
rabid discontentment, but to search with all I had to find a way through.

The single best advantage I gained from anxiety was it gave
me impetus to fight.

Why do we just sit there and take it; this grating sense of inner
itchy discontent?

The times I’ve had to fight to survive, and the times I’ve
had to fight in the hope I could overcome anxiety, were the times I did what I
needed to do, instinctively, by faith.

It’s all about the tenacity to search. To search is to enter
the caldron by faith — and years may pass without much vision for what we hope
for. It’s not the point. The point is we continue to press on, even though from
time to time we give up.

Like entering university or college, we learn to research for
the first time, being forced to search in order to know enough truth to do a
good job of our assignments. The same applies for the capacity of anxiety to
force us to use our ingenuity — birthed from the belief that we can climb out
of the distress.

The single best advantage I gained from anxiety was to fight
like crazy to find, to search, for the way or ways out. Such a search
inevitably causes us to learn great skills and attitudes that set us up for the
rest of our lives.

***

All we need when we suffer anxiety is to know that our
suffering isn’t in vain. It has its purpose.

Sometimes the only hope we have left is to believe. And it’s
always enough. It’s always enough to believe in something worth believing in.
Some sceptics might say we are wasting our time, but to give up without
believing is to have zero percent chance.

I’d rather have a fighting chance. And, besides, those of us
in the faith have seen God work miracles when we had faith and simply did what
faith requires: obeyed.

If we will search for the answers in addressing our anxiety
we may be pleasantly surprised at what we might learn.

Friday, June 19, 2015

EMOTIONAL is what every person is; but there is such a range
along a continuum of emotional health and ill-health. Pete Scazzero has carved
out a niche in this area called emotionally healthy spirituality.

I took part in Scazzero’s 46-question survey.
It’s the sort of survey we get no value out of unless we are brutally honest.
You take a survey like this if you’re interested in personal growth on an
emotional and spiritual level. Needless to say, I will keep my personal result
to myself. But one thing the analysis convinced me of was the veracity for attaining
adult emotionality. The rest of this article is purposed toward the areas of
competency toward that end.

Depth of Personhood

How deep do we reflect and how deep do we think about our own
lives — even our finite interactions and perceptions? If we are able to easily
share our fears and pain and our anger with trusted others toward growth we are
well on the way. A deep personhood is couched in courageous honesty.

Depth of
Redemptiveness of Past

The mature have dealt with the demons of past and any
residual guilt or shame has been vanquished in truth. That means the processes
of therapy have been engaged with. Nothing that is our truth breeds fear
anymore — that’s where it needs to get to. We are no longer afraid of ourselves
or our past. The key test is the approval of others. We don’t need it.

Depth of Lived
Brokenness and Willed Vulnerability

A person who can actively jettison self-protection — especially
if they offer their strength to others — is a person who can live their acknowledged brokenness
through a willed sense of vulnerability. It’s a courageous life that exudes
safety for others, because it’s a life that is safe within itself. Such a
person is emotionally and spiritually right when they are wrong; when
they fall upon their sword, say sorry, and seek forgiveness. They prefer to
judge themselves than judge others.

Depth of
Acceptance for Limitedness

What a strength it is to know our weakness. We have such
limitations. One of the benefits I’ve gleaned from burnout (ten years ago now)
is my limitations are more on a knife’s edge than ever before. I’m constantly
reminded of the need to restore balance. Those with a gift for their limits are
wisely adult in their emotionality.

Depth of
Experience of Grief and Loss

Expression of sadness and loss and grief are pivotal in this
area. That, and to be able to fully acknowledge them without denying any of it.
If we are the type of person that people seek out in their distress, we model
such a depth that is priceless for the hurting.

Depth of
Intimacy with Others

Connecting with others is the point here. If we have the
ability to enter others’ worlds, and actually discern them and engage with
their inner material, we have a great gift — a gift counsellors need! The
capacity for into-me-see is vital. The ability to build relationships at depth
is necessarily countered by the adult sense of proper boundary — impelled by
the duty of responsibility. Emotional adults (as opposed to adolescents,
children and infants) don’t get drawn into affairs because intimacy went wrong.
The mature have learned to erect safe boundaries of self-awareness where the
vulnerable cannot be hurt.

Depth of
Integrity Manifested in Self-Control

This is not just any sort of self-control. It is self-control
over our use of time, which means neither envy, nor greed, nor covetousness are
inwardly (unconscious) drivers for us. If we find that devotional and spiritual
activities have their own reason for being our integrity is vouchsafed.

***

The biggest favour we could ever do for ourselves is to
embrace adult emotionality. A reasonable, rational, responsible, realistic,
reliable and logical person is our best gift to others and ourselves.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

TWO different situations on the same day proved to me the
depth of life in the mode of understanding. Understanding is the key to
everything.

The first situation involved a young lady who was estranged
from her parents and was missing them so much. They were missing her, too. It
was an enforced separation for a time due to a project she was working on in a
remote location. Yet, homesickness threatened to derail her progress. Her
parents had given her every backing on this new vocation. The challenge was one
of simply sticking at it.

The second situation involved a mother of five, who was in
hospital recovering from surgery that had complications. A relatively simple
procedure hadn’t gone to plan. Pain management was now an issue and the woman’s
ability to endure the pain was stretched past the limit. She wanted it ended.
Her hope had completely evaporated.

Both of these situations prove that understanding is our
greatest aid. In both situations there is pain. In both situations there is a
sought-after outcome and a situation to run from. But both these situations
illustrate how getting our own way runs cross grain against the truth of the presented
reality.

Understanding is where our thoughts and feelings match God’s
thoughts and feelings.

It’s incredibly hard!

We may feel as though we simply cannot go on. But we lack
only understanding. Understanding doesn’t promise us a way out of the things we
loath. It simply aligns us with God’s truth. Understanding doesn’t miss a beat.
Understanding cannot lie. Understanding agrees with God in how and why to keep
going the hard way.

If, in the first situation, the young lady can knuckle down,
she will get through. She needs to be able to discuss her homesickness with
someone who has empathy, warmth and genuineness — a person-centred counselling approach.
Such an approach will soften appropriately enough a very tough direction, to
keep going; that is, to find a resolution beyond complaining. Understanding
knows that if she can get through, then it will be right to interact with her
parents.

If, in the second situation, our mother of five is able to
bear up under the pain, and she will need copious support, she will prove a
good level of understanding. It’s possibly the hardest thing she will ever do.
And she should be applauded every step.

***

Understanding accepts the truth of life that can only in
truth be accepted.

The hardest truths in life, when accepted, prove that we
understand life. Understanding life is the key to the abundant life.

When we accept what cannot be changed, we understand, and
nothing can beat us.

Understanding life is accepting the truths we must accept,
for there is no point in denying them.

Understanding will prove the golden gateway to all of life.
It is character put together with maturity.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

LISTENING to Gheorghe Zamfir’s Lonely Shepherd, I know God is going to take my mind’s heart off to
some distant galaxy that has its best view of my life as I live it right now.

Isn’t it peculiar how far we need to go from our inner lives
in order to see the inner life for what it is?

The problem is this: we do not learn early enough in life
(if, indeed, we learn ever at all) to look at life and live it from the eternal
perspective.

Yet life is but a wisp, a piece of fluff on the carpet so
easily sucked up by the vacuum pressure of life.

We miss the point of life. We don’t get to understand the
eternal gravity of life. Like the undeniable significance of dependence. My son
is so dependent on me. When he went into a bed, having graduated from his cot,
it was such an important moment for him. It was an important moment for me and
my wife. He was no longer a baby.

Our families are growing as we speak and listen and consume
time for understanding.

We don’t get back one second that is given us.

In all truth, there are bound to be regrets — things we
wished we had done or not done or done better. But regrets are positive, in
that, they impel us; they motivate us to do better before it’s too late.

***

And where does
this end?

It ends at the
point where we ask ourselves a question that has no answer; no answer, but an
invitation. What does our life stand for? The way we are living our lives, what
does it stand for?

Our lives are
passing away, yet we have this day.

What are we to
do with our life this day, given the eternal nature of such a fleeting life has
a remarkability about it that we cannot deny.

One day we meet
God. That day we will give an account. Actually, our lives will account for us.
We will stand before God, kneeling as an expression of thunderstruck awe, and
our life will be right before us. We will know what God is saying. What will
God say?

What is missing
from our lives is the mode of peaceful, daily reflection — not about what we
seek or desire, but it’s about how we are behaving. It’s not about the things
God is yet to give us, but it’s about what we are doing with what we’ve already
got. It’s not about ministry or even the lost. It’s about family, principally.
Then it’s about the lost. It’s about the human family and creation. It’s not
about what angers us. It’s more about what should impassion us, but isn’t. What
do we do about the truths of life that matter most to those who love us; those
we are called, sacrificially, to love?

It’s about the
simpler things; being grateful for the simple things.

What is eternity
saying as we look back at our lives from there? (A ‘sneak peak’.)

There is today,
this day alone, and no other presentation of time or life to work with.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Make your past the very platform for your future. Do what you’ve
never done before. Hammer a stake in the ground, today!

That’s what this article is about: forging a future that
departs from the forces that have held us in the past — for far too long.

It starts today. And the vision we create has to in no way be
a perfect one to abide us in peace and proffer us to joy. Today is simply a new
day. It is a gift the same as all the thousands of days we are given.

As we awaken on a new such day, laying in our beds, having
been cared for by God throughout the rest we had, we lay and ponder a moment.
Then we spring out of bed. Why? Because we can. Then we wiggle our toes and do
a bend-back stretch. Why? Because we can. Then we separate the curtains and
open the blinds. Why? You guessed it! Because we can.

We can do what we want today. Everything is a choice.
Everything, even to enter a workplace in the sight of fear, bitterness and
despair, and do so courageously.

But some of us have arisen this morning to a death in our psyche;
an inexplicable heaviness of heart. Perhaps there is thought of the day
derailed before it started.

Never mind. Whether we decide to languish or leap is
inconsequential. God understands. And with no coercion in view, the Lord will
give us power to rise, if we would want — even in some remotest of way — to join
his will for life.

***

God is good. For
the capacity to think our way out of the problems of our minds, God is good. He
gives us passage along the road of our searching. He gives us the faintest of
hopes on the way. And he carries us when we can no longer move.

They say “fake
it ‘til you make it.”

This is nothing
about that. This is the commitment we can make at any time to decide for life,
for in life — which is movement and hope and conquest — is joy. To create the
space within our minds for hope — and to keep that space open — is truly life.

To impassion the
goodness of God in our own lives, notwithstanding any grief we bear, is to
believe; to believe is hope; and, to hope is joy.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Giving is a gift
all its own. There is nothing that will take us directly into the field of God
more than giving with a cheerful heart.

The greatest gift to receive is to be valued.

To be considered, to be accepted,
to be appreciated; these are the receipt of such good gifts that they are God’s
gifts from a loving person to another.

The greatest feeling in the world is to feel
valued.

Being cherished, acknowledged,
appreciated and esteemed is to be respected, even treasured. It’s simply the
greatest feeling. Even better when we feel such from God.

The greatest outcome is that which is valued by
all.

The community wins when the
community is in consensus. It’s a victory that ought to truly be celebrated.

The greatest gratitude is to value God and the
life he gives.

It is hard in a
privileged and comfortable life to express gratitude instinctively. The more we
get the more we want. But to appreciate God and the life he gives is the
greatest gratitude.

The greatest
test of life is to sustain ourselves when we are not valued.

Tough relational
and situational experiences aren’t the end — they can be the beginning; of the
resilient life. The reminder is that we are only truly valued — at all times — by
our eternal God.

The greatest
disappointment is to know we were not valued.

Resignation hits
hard the soul of anyone who knows with the gravity of truth they were never
valued. A certain spiritual death occurs, but not one that cannot be overcome.
Such a revelation as coming face to face with such a horrendous truth can actually
be liberation.

The greatest
courage is in those who value others when they, themselves, are not valued.

The true leader
is capable of the above, and they are commensurately inspiring.

The greatest
hope of all is the eternal value God places on us through Jesus.

We have the
esteem of God, pure and simple. We have the regard of God. Let it sink in. There’s
nothing we can do to improve that situation. Feeling valued by God is our
everything.

The greatest
value is God’s affirming value.

No other esteem or regard comes close to the esteem and
regard of our Creator.

***

People don’t
value what we say until we value who they are.

We don’t value
what people think until we know they value us.

***

The heart of the
matter is this: feeling valued is central to our happiness, joy and contentment
of life, because it provides life with all its meaning.

The meaning of
life is understood when a life of meaning is undertaken.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

WHAT are the
advantages and dispensations for faith? What, in this life, can we cling to in
order that our faith may prove worthy of its own regard in this life?

Here are seven
ways faith, overall, helps us to live the overcoming life:

1.In pain, in
spite of everything, God’s light empowers us to endure. Because we can
endure, we must. It’s sometimes the only solace we can give our pain — to hang
on in there, and to not give up.

2.In trial, in
spite of injustice, God’s light empowers us to be patient. Doing nothing
would seem easy, except when to do nothing torments us. Even in the midst of
trial — a hardship most grotesque — we must verily hold to God’s account of
timing and method. His purpose must be served, and then we are blessed.

3.In testing, in
spite of fear, God’s light empowers our reliance of faith. We ought to
pray that times and situations of testing pique at our awareness. If we know we
are being tested — and we identify our fears — we can easily institute faith to
proceed, wisely, with caution.

4.In failure, in
spite of disappointment, God’s light empowers us to persist. We get down on
ourselves too much in this life when we could see failure as an opportunity — to
get it right next time or the time after. Grace accorded to us, personally,
empowers persistence.

5.In temptation,
in spite of weakness, God’s light empowers us to be faithful. In overcoming those weaknesses that bear over us we have the key to
overcoming them when we are faithful. To be consistent, day in, day out; that’s
what we need to be.

6.In betrayal, in spite of hurt, God’s light empowers us where
to trust again. People will
hurt us, just as much as we are destined, ourselves, to hurt others. When we
see this as a fact of life in relationship with others, we learn the point is
simply when and where and how to trust again.

7.In despair, in spite of fatigue, God’s light empowers us to
trust again in hope. Despair’s
destiny is to find itself in hope. The very presence of despair is the clearest
evidence of hope — a hope dashed. But the boldest hope is outbound of despair.
The person who despairs, yet can hope again (and again), is tenaciously
resilient and spiritually mature.

***

In the harder
times of life we can and should remind ourselves that this, too, shall pass,
for all things are passing away, from the perspective of heaven.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

LEARNING
to live our new life now is as much about seeing, knowing, and accepting God’s
treasure that he’s already put inside us. It’s already there!

If we believe such
a thing — that we are already equipped with much capacity for goodness — we are
able to live such a thing out. In this way, most of what we believe is obligatory
to our actual practice and enjoyment of life.

We become what we believe.

If we have the capacity to believe — which is as much a
ruthless choice as it is something God does in us — we have the capacity to
undergo the Spirit’s transformation. We will not bar, by our own negativity,
the work that the Spirit desires to do in us.

To see as truth, to know by experience, and to therefore accept
these treasures is just what all of us want. But will we go the extra mile and
determine that these treasures are actually, in all truth, there?

There are far too many people interested in belonging right
where they have been in life. The disciple’s life, however, is never about
remaining satisfied with their status quo. If we are dogged by anger can we not
believe that a more patient us resides within? If we are plagued by depression
can we not believe that we don’t have to be characterised by depression
forever? If we are harangued by fear can we not believe that we have the
potential to break past our anxiety? If only we can name our nemesis, then we
are aware and, so, are positioned to make a frontal assault on it.

We will never believe in our own good — the presence of the
gifts God has given us — unless we are prepared to jettison our fear of authenticity.

It is a fear of authenticity, of honesty, and of courage,
that hems us in. We worry what others might say about us if we back ourselves
in. We get concerned that people close to us will think worse of us if we
believe in our potential. Only the jealous types do that, and they are probably
not the ones we should be playing close attention to.

It’s up to us.

What will we do with the lot that has been given us?

Will we take what we have, honestly evaluate it, and make of
what we have for the best?

If we do such a thing as honestly look, so as to see, and find
out, so as to know, and finally be rest assured, so as to accept, we will
discover the treasures God’s placed within each of us.

***

Why do we
criticise ourselves when we don’t as much commend ourselves?

Why do we hate
on ourselves and allow others to hate on us?

When we see
ourselves as worthy of love we more often find others are worthy of love.

God has done
some amazing work in each of us. It’s time we started to believe in the story
that is our life.

Better to believe God made us capable than believe God made
others better.